Seducing Mr. Knightly (27 page)

Angry Women Storm
The London Weekly
Offices

T
HE
M
AN
A
BOUT
T
OWN

At long last, a clue to the true identity of the Nodcock.

The London Times

The following day

K
NIGHTLY
was pretty damn sure that other newspaper proprietors were not plagued by females storming into their offices with all sorts of dramatics, such as he was.

Drama is for the page.

Apparently rules do not apply to females, he thought dryly.

Julianna arrived first, a fiery haired, sharp-tongued hurricane in a green dress. This was a habit of hers. Today he was not inclined to deal with such dramatics, which is to say that he was in a bloody good mood. Whistling while he walked down the street kind of mood. It was the effect of Annabelle and her kiss.

Well, one of them. The other effect was a rampant, relentless desire. Nevertheless, his eyes had been opened and he wanted what he saw. He knew, too, that he wanted to know more about Annabelle, and what that knowledge would cost him. The question was, would he pay the price of throwing off Lady Lydia and enraging Lord Marsden?

It was one hell of a question, and he preferred, instead, to whistle and think of kissing Annabelle.

“Really, Knightly. Really,” Julianna said, with buckets of sarcasm, anger, and disappointment dripping from each syllable. She threw a newspaper on his desk; it landed with a
thwat.

Knightly stopped whistling. He looked at the paper.

“
The London Times,
Julianna. Really? No wonder you’re upset, if you’re reading this second-rate rubbish.”

“Read it.” Her tone was that of ice, covered with frost.

Intrigued, he picked up the paper.

At Lady Wroth’s Charity Ball to benefit the Society of Unfortunate Women,
The London Weekly
’s proprietor Derek Knightly was glimpsed in an extended moonlit interlude with a woman identified as
The London Weekly
’s own Dear Annabelle. Readers of that gimmick-laden news rag will know that she is engaged in a public scheme to win the attentions of a man now known by all of London as the Nodcock.

The Man About Town wouldn’t care in the least about the goings on of two Grub Street hacks, were it not for Knightly’s well-known courtship of Lady Lydia Marsden. Or has this scandal-plagued female lost yet another suitor, this one with very unsuitable connections (for his suitable ones will not claim him)?

Which woman is this by-blow newspaper tycoon after? Will either chit want him now that he is so openly pursuing the affections of two different women? Or is his ton blood showing true, for what aristo is complete without a wife
and
a mistress?

“We’ll file that under scathing. Or perhaps incendiary,” Knightly remarked. He leaned back in his chair, a pose of deceptive ease.

The article was possibly disastrous. Yet he kept his calm because that is what he did and who he was, unlike Julianna, who worked herself up into such a froth over the slightest thing.

“I’d like to file it under inaccurate rubbish, which I presume it is?” she questioned sharply.

“To the contrary,” Knightly replied easily. “I ought to congratulation
The Times
for finally getting their reporting correct.”

“I am beside myself. Utterly beside myself,” Julianna huffed. “This column is—well, it has me speechless with rage, and that is saying something, you must admit.”

“No comment,” Knightly said. Wisely, in his opinion.

“While I don’t really care about Lady Lydia’s feelings on the matter—” Julianna started, switching tactics.

“Which is perfectly clear given the columns you’ve submitted lately in spite of my explicit commands not to write about her.”

“Do not distract, Knightly. This is about Annabelle. And you.”

And that sparked his temper. He leaned forward, palms flat on his desk, eyes surely blazing.

“So you admit that it is none of your business, then?” he challenged.

“I beg your pardon?” He had flummoxed her, and now resisted the urge to crow in satisfaction. That’s what she deserved for meddling in his personal affairs.

“It is between Annabelle and myself. Not you.”

“So you admit there is something between you two,” she replied, tilting her head inquisitively and thinking herself clever.

“Mind your own business, Julianna,” he said, and allowed his irritation to reveal itself in his tone.

“I am employed by you to do precisely the opposite, thank you very much. My task is to mind everybody else’s business.”

“In that case, I excuse you from doing so in this instance,” Knightly replied, pushed aside the unfortunate issue of
The London Times
and picked up the papers beneath. He started to read them in a not-so-subtle clue to Julianna that he was finished with this discussion.

Honestly, if she’d been a man, someone probably would have shot such a vexing, meddlesome creature by now.

Julianna placed her palms on his desk and leaned forward to speak to him in a low, menacing tone.

“Be a gentleman, Knightly. Have a care with her. She’s fragile.”

And that was not to be borne. Annabelle might have been a delicate flower, treated with the utmost care and handled only with kid gloves. But he was discovering that she was made of much sterner stuff, and treating her as such was a disservice to everyone. Bold Annabelle was something else entirely—asking the questions no one had ever dared to voice to him, kissing him with a fervor that made him feel more powerful and
wanted
more than anything. Her kiss made him whistle as he walked down the streets.

He pitied those who didn’t see that Annabelle.

“We must be talking about different Annabelles, then,” Knightly told Julianna. “When I’d rather not discuss Annabelle at all.”

“What should I tell her, when she sees that?” Julianna asked, pointing, witchlike, to
The Times.

“Say whatever you like. Just remember that my personal business is just that—mine.”

Julianna left in a huff, of course, and once relieved of her presence, he strolled over to the sideboard and poured himself a generous serving of brandy.

There were a long list of women and their feelings that would need to be soothed, thanks to that damned Man About Town, and a fortifying drink was certainly in order.

Lady Marsden probably wouldn’t care, so long as he kept her secrets. He smirked—to no one in particular—because he knew why she had missed her second season, and Julianna did not. He ought to casually mention that to her, as payback for her meddling in his personal affairs.

Annabelle on the other hand . . . As he learned her, he knew that she had a heart that beat in overtime, and a capacity for feeling that verged on excessive. She rambled when she was nervous and possessed an extremely active and vibrant imagination. When he kissed her, he could feel her thinking, puzzling, wondering, and memorizing every second of it.

However, with some reassurance—that being a firm command to enjoy it—she melted under his touch. Other women responded to him, but with Annabelle it felt like it mattered, and that made it feel . . . just
more
, really. When every touch of the lips counted, when every caress meant something, when every murmur or sigh was a pleasure unto itself . . .

What the devil had happened to him?

Knightly took a long swallow on the brandy and concentrated deeply on the burn. First, on his tongue. Then the back of his throat. Down, down, down to his gut.

When a man thought about some fleeting kiss with a woman the way he had just caught himself doing, it meant that . . . Well, besotted was the word that came to mind. Or worse—
beholden.
And it wasn’t a fleeting kiss. It was one of those all-consuming, axis-altering kisses.

Besotted indeed. Bloody hell.

His mother appeared in the doorway just then, strolling in like some fiery-haired demon fairy. If he ever wondered what Julianna would be like in thirty years, he now knew.

Bloody hellfire and damnation. Mehitable, a man of gargantuan proportions who had been hired for the sole purpose of preventing such unscheduled appearances by irate readers, must have been drunk on the job. Or this was mutiny.

“What is the meaning of this?” she inquired, shaking a copy of
The London Times
at him.

Knightly downed the rest of his drink and returned to his desk.

“Mother, I have already had this conversation with Lady Roxbury. It might be a better use of your time to go speak with her, as I can tell you both are far more interested in discussing this than I am. I might also add that I am appalled to discover how many
Weekly
women have exposed themselves as readers of
The London Times
.”

His mother sat in the chair before his desk.

“Utterly appalled,” he repeated, and then returned to his work. Or tried to. He looked at the page but didn’t manage to read a single word, try as he might.

“You do realize that Dear Annabelle is beloved by all of London,” his mother said. “If it turns out that you were the man she was after . . .” Knightly stiffened, held his breath. Why did that thought paralyze him every time? His mother appeared not to notice and carried on.

“ . . . Well, I daresay you’ll have a mob of angry Londoners at your door.” Was it wrong that he thought that spoke well of Annabelle’s column and what a great story it would make?

“Mehitable will handle any angry mobs,” he replied. After a stern talking-to about the admittance of angry females.

“For all you know, Mehitable may lead the mob,” she challenged.

“No he won’t. I pay his wages.” Knightly stated this as simple fact. He just needed to remind Mehitable of that.

“Nevertheless,” his mother persisted, “what are your intentions? Because if you throw over Dear Annabelle, with whom you obviously are infatuated—”

“Obviously?”

“I’m sorry. Are you in the habit of moonlit interludes with desirable young women and then kissing them—but not
liking
them? Especially when it seems you have an understanding regarding marriage with another woman. Have you inherited my talent for acting, after all?”

“Is this really any of your business?” he asked, growing angry now.

“What does that have to do with anything?” his mother asked, so genuinely perplexed by the concept of “minding one’s own business” that he was struck speechless. She carried on in his silence: “At any rate, this story reminded me that I need to tell you something about your father. Before you make a mistake.”

That got his attention. He set his papers aside.

“Your father loved us,” she said plainly.

“I know that—” he began, but she waved him off.

“No, listen to me. He loved us. And he didn’t love
them,
and they knew it. How do you think that boy felt growing up, always second in his father’s attentions? Can you imagine it, Derek?”

He never had. Not once.

The heir, taking second place to his father’s bastard child. He imagined the New Earl wanting to review his lessons, or asking after his father, who was never home. It began to dawn on Knightly what wretchedness the New Earl must have suffered, to be ignored, overlooked, second best. Knightly had always known he was loved.

“And Lady Harrowby was married but never had a husband, not really. But she
chose
that because your father told her about us before they were wed.”

“Why did he marry her, anyway?” Knightly asked. If they were in love . . . why did they not make it official? So what if his mother was an actress? Wasn’t half the fun of a title doing whatever you damn well pleased?

“Duty. Debts. Lack of courage at the crucial moment,” she said, turning to look out the windows overlooking bustling Fleet Street. Did he detect tears? Did he detect more to the story—that her mother had asked his father
not
to marry someone else. Had she asked him to forget about duty and respectability and implored him to choose love instead?

His mother, now composed, turned back to face him. “They live in a world, Derek, where love doesn’t matter.”

He thought of Lady Lydia’s plaintive question:
What if I wish for a love match?
He didn’t have an answer for her, but he possessed a deeper understanding of the question now.

“I suppose it goes without saying that I wish you to have love,” his mother carried on. “And if you still insist on some marriage for status and wealth, don’t do it out of some notion to be like your father. It would be a dishonor to us both.”

Chapter 33